Contemporary tapestry artist, Rebecca Mezoff, waxes on about weaving, yarn, and life in the Southwestern United States...

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

In which I am up to my eyeballs in technology.

You know you may be a little too busy when you find yourself reading "An Introduction to Telehealth as a Service Delivery Model Within Occupational Therapy"* on the toilet as a way to get your professional development updates in somewhere.

I am not the most tech-saavy person, though I do try hard and I get by with a little help from my friends (okay, a lot of help from my friends--yes, I had the Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band when I was a kid, but no, I'm not really that old. I was a 15 year old stuck in a 40 year old's world for awhile). Somehow this week I am getting a grand education in all things web-based.

A website migration (this might take awhile--I use Squarespace and they have a great new platform and I want to use it, but it takes some learning for me to get the new stuff figured out... fortunately for me, Squarespace is great at those little videos where you look at a screen and someone is talking and the little arrows click on things and you can sort of do the same thing on your screen)

Some new teaching products (new websites, new concepts in creating online forums... etc)

Use of a real newsletter mail server in which people who want to hear from me can just sign up and I don't have to manually manage a whole lot of email address... which will keep gmail from getting too mad at me also

Learning iMovie for making videos for teaching (actually using the video camera itself was a bit of a challenge and I lost all the video from my sister's baby shower and that is really quite horrible as I promised to send it to many many people, but I'm better now. I haven't deleted anything important in the last few weeks and I even made a video of my niece in which she is adorable and I hope my sister will forgive me one day)...

There is a big learning curve on a lot of these things, but with the help of some people smarter than me and a little swearing, I am going to come through it without losing my marbles.

In other technological news, my little Canon Elph camera is giving up the ghost. I am really sad about it, but she has stopped writing reliably to the SD card. I will admit that though I bought the camera exactly 2 years ago just before going to Germany for the Bauhaus project, she has taken tens of thousands of photos and I suppose that is all you can ask for a camera that cost just north of $100. I haven't brought myself to order a new one yet, but I know it is imminent.

All this is my reason for not weaving anything at all recently (well that, a wedding, a month-long trip, and the fact that I just can't love the LeClerc Gobelin loom like I love my Harrisville Rug Loom. I have tried, but I feel like I'm in 7th grade again when I'm trying to use the vertical loom... awkward, gangly, and full of acne.)

At least I'm getting some yarn dyed--mostly when the really really bad internet we have out here in the boonies absolutely refuses to work. I plead and dance around the modem and promise it kindness and that I won't stream anything offensive, but it frequently balks and sends me back to the dye pot. Perhaps that is a good thing.

Boot Mountain Bristlecone (great Sunday field trip!)

*In OT Practice, April 23, 2012 (I'm a few months behind). It is the issue with the superhero on the cover. I have given up on the REAL professional journals--those would be the articles in the journal without pictures with pages of references at the end of each 30 page article. I don't have that much gut trouble.